söndag 30 oktober 2016

Ett av de ledande magasinen för poesi i Storbritannien står i centrum för veckans Londonbesök. År 2013 firade Poetry London 25-årsjubileum och året efter publicerades en antologi med ett urval dikter från tidskriftens utgåvor. Av någon anledning har redaktörerna lagt tyngdpunkten på tidskriftens senare historia. Blott 15% av dikterna i boken är hämtade från tidskriftens första tretton år. Jag kommer att göra två nedslag i boken. Den andra episoden sammanfaller med första advent.*** Jag börjar med att presentera delar av tidskriftens deklaration:"From modest beginnings in 1988, when it was a listings newsletter, Poetry London has developed into one of the UK’s leading poetry magazines.Do not be misled by our name: Poetry London has the same relation to London as The New Yorker has to New York. In other words, it is a national and international magazine. We publish three times a year and feature poems and reviews from across the UK and Ireland, but also from the US, Canada and Australia and many in translation."

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A bowl of warm air, by Moniza Alvi(Published in Poetry London, Summer 1995.)Someone is falling towards youas an apple falls from a branch,moving slowly, imperceptibly as ifinto a new political epoch,or excitedly like a dog towards a bone.He is holding in both handseverything he knows he has—a bowl of warm air.He has sighted you from afaras if you were a dramatic crooked treeon the horizon and he has seen you close uplike the underside of a mushroom.but he cannot open you like a newspaperor put you down like a newspaper.And you are satisfied that he is veering towards youand that he is adjusting his speedand that the sun and the wind and rain are in front of himand the sun and the wind and rain are behind him.(Moniza Alvi föddes i Lahore, Pakistan, och kom till England när hon var några månader gammal. Hon växte upp i Hertfordshire och studerade vid universiteten i York och London. Peacock Luggage, en bok med dikter av Moniza Alvi och Peter Daniels, publicerades som ett resultat av att de två tilldelades the Poetry Business Prize, 1991. Sedan dess har Moniza Alvi gett ut åtta diktsamlingar. Källa: Författarens officiella webbplats)***The mobile library's last stop, by Paul Farley(Published in Poetry London, Summer 1996.)

Don't park it outside the World's End Estate -instead, take it down to the Embankment,idle in neutral like a suicide the rollover the edge, the books sliding down shelves,to hang weightless at the moment you tip,in silhouette a Brandt nocturne of a busbeginning its crawl over Battersea Bridge.

Battersea Bridge

Watch the river fill the windscreen,the cockpit dissolve in a fountain of glasson impact - survive this to tread effluviaas it fills, sharing a dwindling pocketof air with the books, whose pages foldand flap and glow, their ink as boldas the day they rolled into this world.

(Paul Farley, f. 1965, började tidigt vinna utmärkelser med sin poesi. Han vann Poetry Review's Geoffrey Dearmer Prize och fick the Forward Prize for Best First Collection med The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You, och vann Whitbread Poetry Prize för sin andra bok, The Ice Age, som också valdes till Poetry Book Society Choice. Källa: Poetry Archive)***The light collector, by Jean Sprackland(Published in Poetry London, Summer 2000.)He knows broad daylight inside out, can't get excited any more by the tawdry brilliance of it,flattening everything, dumbing it down.From an open window on the seventh floorhe watches the street scudding below, and thinksI must make something of my life, as if it werea bag of rags for recycling. Gauzy scraps of dawnhave begun to bore him. He leans out into the caramel light of late summer eveningsmattering wet roofs and TV aerials: too rich, too obvious.At night he daydreams tricks so brighthe feels they lend him context. He knows he has a steady way with starlight,can pick it up like sand on a fingertip.He goes out under the moon, in the fabulous airtasting of electricity. He lingers by houses with drawn curtains, presses himself thin as a shadow and watches light bleeding from the open doorway of a pub.But it leaves him hungry. What he seeks for his own broken purpose is smallermore secretive sources: the bits you find in the sweepings of a long day alone.The cryptic blue cast by a computer. The smash-and-grab of camera flash. The blade of light under the doorwith voices glinting behind it.

He wants to stop all the draughts in this placewith light, he wants it to shed meaning. In the dark kitchen he opens the fridgeand the light is so sweet and precise it leaves him aching.(Jean Sprackland, f. 1962, är en engelsk poet och författare. Hon har gett ut tre diktsamlingar och en bok med essäer om landskapet och naturen. Källa: Wikipedia)

A match with the moon, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti(From Sonnets : from Dante to the present / selected and edited by John Hollander. New York : A.A. Knopf, 2001.)Weary already, weary miles to-night I walked for bed: and so, to get some ease, I dogged the flying moon with similes.And like a wisp she doubled on my sightIn ponds; and caught in tree-tops like a kite; And in a globe of film all liquorish Swam full-faced like a silly silver fish; —Last like a bubble shot the welkin's heightWhere my road turned, and got behind me, and sent My wizened shadow craning round at me, And jeered, “So, step the measure,—one two three!”And if I faced on her, looked innocent.But just at parting, halfway down a dell,She kissed me for good-night. So you'll not tell.

"Everybody knows" är en sång skriven av den kanadensiska låtskrivaren Leonard Cohen och hans medskapare Sharon Robinson. Hon har även sjungit in en (bra) version av låten. Ni kan lyssna på den i spellistan. Låten släpptes först på Cohens album I'm your man (1988). Låten har använts i stor utsträckning inom tv- och filmproduktioner. Allan Moyles film Pump Up the Volume presenterade låten på ett framträdande sätt. Den är en favorit för huvudpersonen Mark Hunter (Christian Slater, som operatören av en FM-piratradiostation ) och Cohens låt spelas från en fonograf på skärmen flera gånger under Marks hemliga sändningar. Källa: Wikipedia**Everybody knows, performed by Leonard Cohen(From album: I'm your man. Columbia Records, 1988.)Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows that the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That's how it goes Everybody knowsEverybody knows that the boat is leaking Everybody knows that the captain lied Everybody got this broken feeling Like their father or their dog just died Everybody talking to their pockets Everybody wants a box of chocolates And a long stem rose Everybody knowsEverybody knows that you love me baby Everybody knows that you really do Everybody knows that you've been faithful Ah give or take a night or two Everybody knows you've been discreet But there were so many people you just had to meet Without your clothes And everybody knowsEverybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows Everybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knowsAnd everybody knows that it's now or never Everybody knows that it's me or you And everybody knows that you live forever Ah when you've done a line or two Everybody knows the deal is rotten Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton For your ribbons and bows And everybody knowsAnd everybody knows that the Plague is coming Everybody knows that it's moving fast Everybody knows that the naked man and woman Are just a shining artifact of the past Everybody knows the scene is dead But there's gonna be a meter on your bed That will disclose What everybody knowsAnd everybody knows that you're in trouble Everybody knows what you've been through From the bloody cross on top of Calvary To the beach of Malibu Everybody knows it's coming apart Take one last look at this Sacred Heart Before it blows And everybody knowsEverybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows Oh everybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows***

The light gatherer, by Carol Ann Duffy(From Feminine gospels : poems. New York : Faber and Faber, 2003.)When you were small, your cupped palmseach held a candleworth under the skin, enough light to begin,and as you grew,light gathered in you, two clear raindropsin your eyes,warm pearls, shy,in the lobes of your ears, even alwaysthe light of a smile after your tears.Your kissed feet glowed in my one hand,or I'd enter a room to see the corner you played inlit like a stage set,the crown of your bowed head spotlit.When language came, it glittered like a river,silver, clever with fish,and you sleptwith the whole moon held in your arms for a night lightwhere I knelt watching.Light gatherer. You fell from a starinto my lap, the soft lamp at the bedsidemirrored in you,and now you shine like a snowgirl,a buttercup under a chin, the wide blue yonderyou squeal at and fly in,like a jewelled cave,turquoise and diamond and gold, opening outat the end of a tunnnel of years.

Sajtens deklaration:"Ink Sweat & Tears is a UK based webzine which publishes and reviews poetry, prose, prose-poetry, word & image pieces and everything in between. Our tastes are eclectic and magpie-like and we aim to publish something new every day."*You, by Richard Law(Published in Ink, sweat & tears. October 5, 2016.)

Tonight, the sky sags, heavy with stars,and the wind has a cough,but I need a breeze,though the winter frosthas sandpapered my knuckles. Cracked,they look tough and dryas elephant hide and dangle,hesitant above the keys.Fingers slowly flex out the frostlike a spider, dying. I loved youlike hell. Ah, and there it is-the brain, beer-battered,swimming in cliché:the moon is at the window.

The stars freckle your cheeks.Beyond, the river jumpswith singing salmon.And I could’ve swornI brought you mountainswrapped in bows.But we built our loveon concrete, with cement mix kissesand scaffolding, skirting round a buildingthat will never fall,but will never be finished. I loved you, truly,as Neruda would have loved you,and even he would’ve tipped his dusty heartup like an old box in an attic and searchedthrough the empty frames,imagining things.*** IS & T grundades av författaren Charles Christian 2007 som en plattform för ny poesi och kortprosa, och för experimentella verk inom digitala medier. Sedan 2010 har Helen Ivory varit del av redaktionen och hon har nu ensamt ansvar för webbplatsens innehåll. Hon föddes i Luton, men bor nu Norwich med sin make, poeten Martin Figura där de basar för organisationen Cafe Writers.*The woman who could not say goodbye, by Angela Readman(Published in Ink, sweat & tears. October 6, 2016.)He’ll come to hear it soon enough, by the doorwhere a woman can simply put herself out with the milk.The air there is ivory, cool as a piano key wornby notions of leaving that didn’t play out. It is not a soleact, farewell, but a language slow as wood smokedoving the wall over the hearth. He’ll come to learnthe so longs she laid all around the house. Carvedinto couches, an embrace of absence, sags where he can sit

now and observe her slow bow, stowed in the snowdropsshe placed in a vase. So suddenly, the clothes lineslook like unwritten confessions in diaries. The horizon isa closed ballroom where days of the week refuse to dance.*** Sajtens publicerade dikter är till övervägande delen skrivna av mindre kända poeter. Mitt sista valda exempel är författat av en student vid The University of Gloucestershire.Blues (part 1), by Taylor Edmonds(Published in Ink, sweat & tears. October 13, 2016.)

IThe creature found me in Hensol Forestduring my sixteenth summerI didn’t eat anything that wasn’t blueberry flavouredfor two weeks and three daysIt lived in a wood cabin with a log fireand floorboards that creaked under my weightWe ate blueberry pie together with our bare handsMy blue legs crossed on a matted fur rugwith rust-coloured stains on the underneathI bathed with blueberriesburst open their plump skinand left a blue-black stain on the cast-iron rim of the bathtubThe creature slept in a roomwith tree roots grounded into the floorTrunks stretched their arms across the wallsAs we entered their crooked fingers unfolded